Selected Poems

P.J. Kavanagh was born in England in 1931, and worked as a lecturer, actor and broadcaster, as well as a writer. His Collected Poems were published in 1992, the year in which he was given the Cholmondeley Award for poetry. His memoir The Perfect Stranger won the Richard Hillary Prize in 1966, and his first novel A Song and Dance was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1968. From 1983 to 1996 P.J. Kavanagh was a columnist on the Spectator, and from 1996 to 2002 on The Times Literary Supplement. In addition to his four novels for adults and two children's novels, he wrote a travel autobiography (Finding Connections), a literary companion (Voices in Ireland) and has edited The Oxford Book of Short Poems and The Essential G.K. Chesterton, and, for Carcanet, a new edition of his Collected Poems of Ivor Gurney.

Praise for the Collected Poems of Ivor Gurney: "A splendid selection...It is in his poems of the war--its scenes kept returning to him until he ceased to write--that Gurney is unique."--D.J. Enright, Observer"A body of work which is extremely powerful...a significant landmark in literary history."--Times Literary Supplement"These are poems that tell us we are in the presence of a great poet...An exemplary edition."--Donald Davie, The London Review of Books"Excellent...These poems are a revelation. This book should at least establish that strange, uncomfortable, and neglected poet to rank with his contemporaries Wilfred Owens and Edward Thomas."--David Wright, Sunday Telegraph